Small suggestions topic

As much as I like the draggable queue (and i understand it has bugs) sometimes i really just want a build this unit right now, and then go back to the previous queue, without fiddling with it. Yes i know you can stop all but one current unit and then add unit, but then there goes my queue. Would be nice to have a hot key (alt maybe?)- click unit, and then back to more important things.

@macdeffy said in Small suggestions topic:

As much as I like the draggable queue (and i understand it has bugs) sometimes i really just want a build this unit right now, and then go back to the previous queue, without fiddling with it. Yes i know you can stop all but one current unit and then add unit, but then there goes my queue. Would be nice to have a hot key (alt maybe?)- click unit, and then back to more important things.

If you have 2 factories, and one is assisting the other (let's call them the "lead factory" and the "follower factory") then the follower is building units from the main factory's queue and those units rally to the main factory's waypoint.

You can select the follower factory and put something into ITS queue. Whenever a follower factory has something in its queue, it won't stop building whatever it's working on, but as soon as that unit rolls out, the follower factory will start building from ITS own queue, and send that unit to ITS own waypoint, not the lead factory's queue/waypoint.

If your "follower factory" is set to infinite repeat, it will never "finish" working on its own queue, you will have to intervene somehow to get it to resume following the "lead" factory.

But if it's NOT set to infinite repeat, it will only make its own queue one time before returning to following the lead factory.

This lets you do things like: click on a supporting factory and tell it to make 2 mobile AA. You will get only exactly 2 MAA without disrupting your main factory's queue. You can click on a supporting factory, put an attack-move order to some reclaim, and tell it to make 3 engineers. So you can get some reclaim engies out without disrupting your main queue. Click on a supporting air factory to make a strat bomber, when it's done the support factory will go back to making ASF. etc. etc. etc.

Perhaps if you only have 1 factory, you should have enough APM to micro it to get what you want. And if you have multiple factories, probably some of them should be supporting other ones.

Fair enough. I actually do this and just skipped my mind. Was thinking more about that early game where i have one factory and needed an AA asap that wasn't queued early enough. I doubt id use it anywhere else, so ignore my suggestion as i Clearly didn't think it through.

@foodmansteve said in Small suggestions topic:

So I use attack move from fact a lot for reclaim engineers. But they can not think when an enemy wall is in range and they can't decide if they want to reclaim it or shine a spotlight on it for 0.001 second. Is there a way to either get them to ignore the wall or actually reclaim them? (I think it does the same for enemy units if they are in the increased reclaim range)

You know this is annoying when I see this but then I forget about it and don't ask. Why does this happen? Is there a valid reason for it or could this be fixed?

I think it is good because it allows for counterplay and stops attack move engineers from reclaiming battlefields from maximum range if there are enemy units or walls nearby.

I think the engineers should ignore the walls. It's an attack-move order, which means attack first (reclaim for engineers) and move if that's not possible. You can see this with other units like medium tanks or artillery - if an enemy is in range, they attack. If not, they move. So it seems to me that engineers should move around the walls if there's a route available, since they can't attack it.

I'm a noob though so I don't know if engineers try to reclaim enemy structures when they're in range and on an attack-move order. If so, then the engineers should probably try to reclaim the walls since they're just another enemy building.

Engies ignoring walls makes walls significantly more op as nobody wants to spend the 40 clicks to get rid of your wall only for u to have made 4 more behind it.

@ftxcommando said in Small suggestions topic:

Engies ignoring walls makes walls significantly more op as nobody wants to spend the 40 clicks to get rid of your wall only for u to have made 4 more behind it.

What they do now makes them more op than engies just ignoring them - they'll spend 50 years trying and failing to reclaim them, never go idle, and ignore other mass that's there if you're not paying attention and then do everything manually. At least when you do a factory attack move.

This issue doesn’t happen with all attack moves. It’s sporadic.

How about an option to make the default chat recipients to always be chat to allies instead of chat to all?

Having to always press shift+enter is annoying and also error prone as many a accidentally spilled plan can attest to

@cheeseberry will do

@jip said in Small suggestions topic:

Interesting - it is possible. Any particular reason why it is only half speed? Take for example a slider where you can tell a structure (note: not a unit) to use a % of its build power. It feels a bit balance related in some sense, so I'd love to hear from the balance team about this idea too.

A slider might be too fiddly in the heat of doing 100 things at once in a stressful game. What about if you right click on the factory pause button it goes to build at half speed mode but if you left click it does actually pause? We'd need a new graphic for the half speed pause button.

Would be a good option for when you don't want to pause everything but want to free up mass for another thing you are building. I am obviously aware you could just fully pause factories right now but am just suggesting this mechanism could ease up their mass consumption at key moments in the game. Hedging your bets of a sort, like if you think you have navy won so you reduce their output rather than pause it entirely...just in case..

Hello

Another small suggestion: what about a warning message (audio & visual) if you are going to ctrl-K your commander?

It happened to me in a few games to have a friend that died because he ctrl-K his com while he wanted to ctrl-K a group of units near by. When it happens it really ruins the game =(

Thanks!

Sounds hilarious to me though. I can add in a similar dialog* to that of the campaign: but then with a yes / no.

@freemp there is already mod like this

@Ctrl-K Good to know. But I think it should be enabled by default in FAF. Many people do not download mods and I had games ruined because of those bad mistakes ^^

I also have accidentally insta-killed my ACU with a hasty ctrl-K I must admit, and extra confirmation box would be good if it was standard with FAF.

Also, on a serious note, am I the only person who finds the sound of torpedo bombers doing an attack run incredibly high pitched and painful? By the time you have a few dozen in constantly bombing runs it's pretty painful to endure. What does everyone else think? I'd love the sound effect to be changed!

@freemp After doing this 2 times in 2 games (while playing stoned mind you lol) I ALWAYS look at my ACU when I ctrl+k anything to see if the 5-second timer is ticking on the ACU so I can cancel if needed. It's very disheartening for a team when one of their meatshields bows out this way lol. That said I am not a fan of changing it.

Back in 2019 I created some code with the idea to quickly find the fairest Teams for the players in a lobby. A pull request was made by shalkya called "Button for balancing teams". It would be nice if someone with FA lobby knowledge could finish this pull request as I think most of the hard work has been done already.

That way all players would need to do a hit the balance team button and then decide which positions they want to play (players can then manually balance slots for who vs who).

https://github.com/FAForever/fa/pull/2903

The description is lacking in what still needs to be done - it is not a small suggestion. You're welcome to give it a go if you're interested, if not, then I will try and look into it but I can't make any promises on whether it becomes part of the next patch.